Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Now, more than ever, it's time for newspapers -- Nov. 24, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

It’s the holiday season, so here’s a suggestion for
your shopping list: Give a newspaper subscription. Better, give two – one local
and one national.

To me, getting the newspapers – yes, two -- off the
sidewalk in the morning and sitting with them and a cup of coffee is one of the
joys of life. People who read newspapers prefer to read them in print, studies
show, but fewer people are experiencing that joy.

It’s an irony of our time that newspaper circulation
continues to decline when we need to know more than ever what our elected
officials are doing. Our democracy needs voters who can distinguish between
truth and lies.

We need real news, reliable information from sources
we can trust. Real news is the antidote to toxic fake news, click-bait stories
that deliberately mislead readers for fun and profit.

Average weekday newspaper circulation fell 7 percent
last year, the most since 2010. Sunday paper circulation also declined. Both
were because of fewer print sales. Digital circulation rose 2 percent, according
to the Pew State of the News Media report in June.

For newspapers to survive and do their watchdog work,
they need advertising revenue, which also is in decline.

I recommend giving the print product because we all
spend too many hours in front of screens. If your friends and family prefer
getting their news digitally, by all means give them a digital subscription. Three-fourths
of newspapers now require a subscription to read online.

Bashing the news media is always in fashion for
politicians. President-elect Donald Trump has said about the news media: “They
are so dishonest…70 to 75 percent are totally dishonest. Absolute scum.
Remember that. Scum. Scum. Totally dishonest people.”

He has said he wants to
open up the libel laws so he can sue newspapers, although he had second
thoughts when someone told him he might get sued more as a result.

Trump, who rarely mentions The New York Times without
the word “failing,” is thin-skinned. He doesn’t like news stories that are critical
of him and his policies.

With 13 million followers on Twitter and 12 million on
Facebook, he prefers to bypass the media. On Monday, he put out his plans for
his first 100 days as president in a YouTube video.

But who broke the story of Hillary Clinton’s use of a
private email server? The Times in March 2015 ran a page one story that led to
the FBI investigation.

And it’s not just the big, national newspapers that do
excellent work. Reporters for the Tampa Bay Times and Sarasota Herald-Tribune devoted
18 months to a project that uncovered a pattern of violence, neglect and 15
deaths in state mental hospitals in Florida.

The Portland Press Herald in Maine ran a six-part
series documenting severe ecological changes in the warming ocean from Nova
Scotia to Cape Cod.

Newspapers and the news media are not perfect, of
course. The botched prognostications of the presidential election results hurt credibility.
Reduced budgets have led to staff cuts and curtailed coverage.

Trump is the latest in a line of presidents and
presidential contenders who have used the news media for target practice. Lyndon
Johnson scolded the media that criticized his Vietnam policy. Richard Nixon had
journalists on his enemies list.

During the 1992 campaign, President George H.W. Bush
loved the bumper strip that read: “Annoy the media. Re-elect Bush.”

Bush, though, distinguished between the reporters
covering him and the talking heads he thought unfair. Trump has shown universal
disdain, although he cares deeply what’s said about him.

Trump reportedly rises at 5 a.m., reads several
newspapers, including The New York Times, and watches the morning TV shows –
and then he tweets.

For all his bluster, even Trump recognizes the value
of newspapers.

At his meeting with the Times’s reporters and editors Tuesday,
he called it “a great, great American jewel, a world jewel.” And he said. “I hope
we can get along.”

Right. We’ll see how that works out.

But reading a daily newspaper -- or two -- will give
you the best chance of knowing what really happens around the corner and in the
nation’s capital.

3 comments:

Another important column, Marsha. I learned to read with a print newspaper, and I've never been without one one since. Right now we subscribe to two local papers and also to the Washington Post. There's no substitute for real news!